Thanks for the Memories
by theroadsofar83
Summary: Dean reflects on the memory of some one not many have heard of; Ernestine Winchester.


-Thanks for the Memories-

Ernestine was beautiful.

I remember the day that Sam and I went to meet Dad outside of Parker High, when I first met the kid. I'd started to climb into the Impala's passenger side when I noticed Sam act startled and looked to the back seat. There was a little girl, eight at the oldest, huddled in the opposite corner.

She looked up at me and Sam, we saw that her lime green eyes were bloodshot and there were dark bags under them. She had a round face framed by her wavy brown hair, curled around her jawline. She looked at us with fear, and there was a look of realization in her eyes, I didn't understand what it was until later.

Dad drove us away, out of town, without saying a word. He was never much of a talker, and I'd always been fine with that, but this time I just wanted him to break the silence. My hands itched to turn the radio on, but I knew if I did it wouldn't last. If Dad didn't want it on, it wasn't going to be on. After we'd driven for about an hour he said two sentences that I still remember.

"This is your sister Ernestine. We're going to be watching her for a while." And that was all. In all my sixteen years, I never knew I had a sister. I never wanted one either, but there she was, eyeing all of us from her corner in the back of the Impala.

"I'm Sam." I looked in the rearview mirror to see him offering the girl his smile and his hand. I knew he had to be feeling the same way I was, total shock.

"Hi Sam." If I hadn't seen her mouth the words I wouldn't have realized she'd said it. She wrapped her grimy fingers around his wrist, though she didn't smile, I did see a brief glimpse of life her eyes. I didn't know what she had seen at the time, but I knew it must've scared her.

For the rest of our drive to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, we said nothing. Once we stopped at an old diner in need of paint job and grabbed something to eat, but even there it was kept to ordering. Dad asked Ernestine if she wanted to eat something, and she nodded her head "no". A couple times she'd observe us eating but mostly she just stared at the window next to our booth. On our way out, Sam asked me if I knew what her deal was. I shook my head. I was starting to figure out the truth, however, that her mother was dead. I never imagined Dad with another woman other than my mom, but I never got too far into his personal life.

When we got to Bobby's, he spoke with all of us together for a moment, but soon went outside to talk with my dad about something, Ernestine I assume. I overheard Dad clearly say that her mother was in fact dead. There in Bobby's living room the three of us stood, the high school dropout, the straight-a's nerd, and the girl who lost her home. From then on, however, we became her home.

That was the first day I spent with Ernie. I don't know when I started calling her Ernie, it didn't take long, and pretty soon we all started calling her that even though she hated it. It took me and Sam a while before we got used to making sure she had her cereal every morning and after the school year started, helping her study. It had always been my responsibility to watch after Sam, but now I was going to look after her too.

As the months passed, we started to meet a different Ernie. As she came out of her shell and started to forget about the loss of her mom, which she had personally witnessed, she became a lively, smart kid. She reminded me of Sam, always reading and always trying to help people. She loved Sam, whenever she was upset he was the one she would cling to for support. I was glad she wasn't like me, I've never been one for the whole caring and sharing, instead I've always just kept things to myself. As for Sam, I could tell he loved her too. How anyone couldn't, I don't know.

She had this smile, her eyes would get all crinkly and on top of that she'd be smiling so big her eyes would shut. Whenever she smiled the whole room would light up like the night of July 4th.

Speaking of which, the first Fourth of July that she was with us, I took her and Sam out to this field with a bunch of fireworks I stole. That was when I first saw her truly smile. Sam loved it, he and I kept setting the things off and she'd sit in the grass and laugh at the show in the sky. From what I heard on the news, we ended up setting the field on fire. Dad never found out; I know he would've been pretty mad if he had.

That next January, I didn't really think much of my turning seventeen. But I remember walking through the door to our motel room to find Sam and Ernie sat at the coffee table with a pie.

"Happy birthday Dean!" Sam chorused, Ernie echoing after him.

"Pie!" I grinned, and it was one hell of a pie, too. Apple with golden crust, spiced with cinnamon. I don't know how they bought it except that Sam stole it. That's our family for you. We spent all our money on our job, and the debt that was leftover we paid with credit card scams. Not the most honest bunch, but we'd save your life.

Sam had his first real hunt when he was fourteen, two years afterward. Ernie was nine then, I remember her wanting to come with us, but I reminded her of how she was helping us with the research. Dad was working the gig with us, we were dealing with a Kitsune. She didn't care about what I had said, but at the same time I think she had some understanding of her importance to our case. If something went wrong, she was there for us to call. It ended up being a disaster, really, but it wasn't her fault. There were two kitsunes, Sam let one of them get away. Dad was even madder than I was, but now I know we were too hard on him.

He and Ernie, like I said, they both always wanted to help everyone. Even monsters.

She knew how he felt and she was there for him the same way he always was for her. He and I always told her that everything would be okay. I still remember her sitting by him in the Impala and telling him those same words he needed to hear.

Ernie had her own first case two years after that. Dad started leaving us all on our own more often around then, now that Sam could drive and I had just turned twenty. We were only hunting a spirit and judging by how things were going, we thought it would be a simple salt-and-burn and everything would work out. And it did. Everything went fine. We let her do almost everything, which she insisted on. I think she wanted us to leave her alone, but it's kind of hard to let an eleven year old impersonate a fed. She might have looked old for her age, that was an understatement, but that didn't mean she couldn't pull that far of an age gap off. Playing fed was the one job that regardless of the situation, was always reserved for me. After that case, we let her work with us for a few others, too.

Once everything was resolved and we were already on our way to the next town, I'd call Dad and tell him how well she did. He'd ask me to put her on the phone, and she'd talk to him for a short while before hanging up. Dad never did say much, but he made sure she knew he was proud of her. Dad had his problems, but I know he loved all of us.

Every couple of weeks all of us would hunt together, and even though we fought the whole time, when we'd part our ways later we made sure any strife was resolved. But apparently, we didn't do that enough.

A couple years later, Sam had his eighteenth birthday. We had our usual simple celebration before we went back to beheading monsters.

Later on, Sam gave Dad and me some news.

Ernie was at school, and thank god she was because she didn't deserve to be there for what happened. Sam decided it was time to inform us that he was going to Stanford. I thought he was joking. Dad wasn't listening to the conversation until minutes later.

"Dean, I… I want to help people, I can do that if I become a lawyer."

Everything just fell apart. Sammy was leaving. I always wanted him to leave this life, he didn't deserve to have to live this way. Now he was going to go get a degree and a job and a girl, but most of all, he was going to live. People in our line of work, our lives are dust in the wind. Half of us don't make it to thirty. Now Sammy was going to be normal, that's what he always wanted. Finally he'd get what he deserved to have and I tried to dwell on that alone but I couldn't. He was _leaving_. He wasn't going to ride shotgun in the Impala anymore. He wasn't going to help me hunt. He wasn't going to be waiting at the motel, giving me a sandwich after I came back bloody. But he was going to live, I reminded myself. It was selfish to only think of myself, and how my little brother wouldn't be in my life anymore, but I didn't care.

"You help people now, Sammy." I broke a smile, trying to hide the stress in my throat. He knew how I felt, he knew it was hurting me.

"Dean, I'm still going to talk to you, I'm not dying." _I know you're not_.

"I know Sammy." I nodded. "I'm proud of you." I felt my voice threatening to crack.

"I know." He smiled, resting his hand on my shoulder.

"Dad." He spoke up.

"Yeah, Sam?" He asked, his mind still caught up in the maps in front of him.

"I have an interview."

"For what?" He chuckled to himself.

"Stanford University."

He stopped. He turned around. I didn't need to look at him to know that he was flustered.

"What did you just say?" He demanded.

"Dad they're going to except me into Stanford, I'm going to become a lawyer."

"Boy, you call them up, and you tell them to cancel it. I'm curious Sam, when were you going to tell me this?" He started to raise his voice and I cringed. Everything that happened afterwards I wish I could forget.

Dad never thought about the possibility that his boys would be going to college, I guess. It's not that farfetched, we were hunters. We were family. We stuck together. Listening to Sam and Dad argue made me feel sick. All I know is that Dad told him that if he walked out that door, to never come back.

Sam didn't.

He grabbed his duffel bag from the side of his bed and turned to face me.

"Bye Dean."

That was all. Then he left. If things couldn't get worse, only an hour later, an hour of Dad and I fighting later, Ernie walked in.

When I heard the door open, I hoped it was Sam, I hoped he was going to come home, but no. Instead I had to deal with the nightmare of having to tell Ernestine what happened.

"Hey Dean." She dropped her backpack by the door and walked to the couch against the wall, opening the laptop she had stolen a few weeks before.

"Hey Ernie." I put on my game face and hoped she wouldn't ask where Sam was.

"Where's Sam?"

So much for that. I couldn't bring myself to say where he was. Dad had gone for a drive. Sam, he… Well I don't know. He was there, and then he wasn't.

"Sam's gone." I told her, desperately trying to swallow the lump in my throat.

"Gone where?" She asked, not bothering to look up from the laptop. She was always researching our cases for us, she got a kick out of it or something.

"Stanford." I replied, I didn't know how to tell it to her. Sam meant the world to her. Normally it was whenever I didn't know what to tell her that Sam would sit down with her and let her cry on his shoulder, but now he wasn't there.

She paused.

"What?"

"You heard me Ernie, he went to Stanford! He's gone, he's not coming back! He walked out the door and that was it!" I stood up and shouted at her. I never saw her look so startled before in my life. She was always so calm and fearless, but at that moment I could tell I had printed a scene in her memory she would never forget. I saw tears start to fall from her face.

"He what?" She whispered, closing the lid of the laptop and shoving it aside. And in that moment I saw her whole world fall apart the same way mine had. I regretted yelling at her, that was the last thing she needed. She was just a kid, she didn't need that. She just lost her brother and now I, the only one she had left, was supposed to take care of her. I swore to myself that I would take care of her, and that was the moment I recognized as the first time I let her down. Sure, I'd done it plenty of times before but that was different.

"I'm sorry." I looked her in the eye and I saw all the color drain from those already pale green eyes.

"Sammy's gone?" She cried.

"It's okay Ernie, we'll be okay." I told her when she'd wrapped her thin arms around me and rested her dark head against my shoulder.

"Shh." I tried to be there for her, I tried to be like Sam. Sam always did this for her, not me. I was the one who made sure she had a meal and was taken care of, but Sam was always there for her when she needed that support. Now that was going to have to be my job too.

Dad didn't come back until the next day, but I only know that because he called. That night Ernie and I left that motel in the Impala, I was going to drive us to Bobby's. We'd never left town mid-hunt, but that time we did. Dad was only angrier, which is why I refused to answer his calls. He knew I'd go to Bobby's and sure enough, two days later there he was, but he was calmer then.

Bobby was there for all of us, he always was. Dad and him talked a lot, and he'd left a few days after. As for me and Ernie, we stayed there for weeks. Bobby was almost as broken as us. Sam called, once, to tell me that he had been accepted into the school. I let Ernie talk to him after I made her swear she wouldn't tell Dad. I wish I hadn't; it only broke her worse.

Over the months, we all started to come to terms with Sam not being there. Ernie had changed. I was reminded of the girl I had met on that last day of school, curled in a ball in the back of the Impala. I kept myself going for her sake, but inside I felt dead.

But she started sitting shotgun instead, and she and I started hunting together constantly. It helped take our minds off the fact that Sam wasn't waiting at the motel. Dad and I didn't talk much, but every couple of months we would hunt together, all of us.

I remember our first Christmas without Sam. It was just me and Ernie, we'd snuck into some Christmas tree yard and cut down the smallest tree they had to take back to the motel. We never had any ornaments, every year we would decorate our tree with air fresheners and bullets. We didn't have any money to spend on typical presents, so I just took Ernie to this bar and played pool with her and some of the other people there. It was late and I could buy drinks for both of us without anyone questioning her age, I just told her to stay towards the back of the bar when she had them. But we were happy that day. I didn't think we would be with Sam or Dad not there, but we were. We won two hundred dollars and we left drunker than was probably safe.

We managed to get into 2002 just alright. Everything was finally starting to turn its self-right-side in, but everything became the exact opposite at the drop of a hat.

We were working a case in Charlotte, something was taking people, killing them, then leaving the corpses for the police to find. Normally we'd say serial killer, only all the corpses were completely mutilated when they were found. We looked into it and Ernie believed that it was a certain creature she read up on. The patterns all added up.

"How do we kill it?" I asked.

"You'll laugh; "silver stake to the heart" seems to be the popular opinion."

I did laugh, you have to admit, that was funny.

"Is there a second opinion?" I wondered, wanting to be sure.

"No, that's all I'm really getting on how to kill it."

We figured out where it was hiding and drove to the warehouse.

"Second story." She told me, I nodded.

"Okay then, you head up there and I'm going to check around for any others, then I'll meet you up there. Don't make a move on it until I'm there, you understand?"

"Sure thing, old man." She rolled her eyes.

"Shut up." I groaned, she liked to call me that when she was especially pissed. We went with the plan and parted, and that was the biggest mistake I would ever make.

It was her birthday, that day. We were going to go play poker when the case was over with.

The first thing I heard was something metal drop.

The second was Ernie's scream.

The third was wild laughter.

That thing did have company with it, and I had taken them all out when it happened. I ran so fast, trying to find her. The second floor was an absolute maze. But all I needed to do was follow the sound of her screaming. I heard her crying my name and then just plain crying out in pain.

"Ernie!" I yelled, knowing she was around the corner. It laughed again and then I heard it run away.

"You better run you son of a bitch!" I roared, and that was the minute I found her.

Ernie had always been small, she was a foot shorter than the rest of us and sometimes she looked so thin it scared me.

I almost didn't see her. She was huddled in the corner of that room by the door, and for a second I saw the little girl in the back of the Impala.

"Ernie." I breathed. She was so dark, and then I realized that wasn't her usual black attire, that was blood. I dropped to my knees by her side, cradling her face in my hands.

"Ernie? Hey, hey, it's okay. It's okay. I gotta take you to a hospital, everything's gonna be okay. Hold on Ernie." I sped through my speech, my heart racing. My first thought then was that I couldn't lose her too. She grunted and coughed, blood dripping down her chin.

"D-D-D…"

"Shh, shh, it's okay, hold on." I picked her up and she moaned in pain, her legs were limp and I could tell they were broken. Half her scalp had been torn out, blood drenching the right side of her head, there was so much that her eyes were sealed shut by the flow of it.

"Dean." She said my name as I carried her out of the building, and I threw open the door of the Impala.

"Shh, save your strength, I'm gonna take you to the hospital, they'll patch up and we'll get beers when you get out, okay? Okay Ernie? Ernie?"

"Luuuuh…" She stopped speaking and her whole body went limp, her head falling back, blood dripping onto the asphalt at a faster rate.

She was trying to say "look". And I saw. I don't know why I didn't see it before, maybe because it was so dark. But there was a hole so big in her stomach that I could see the wound through her layers of clothes. That was why there was so much blood. It was everywhere, the road, the car, me, and most of all, her. I think I realized in the back of my head at that horrid moment in time that she wasn't going to make it. She wasn't going to be okay. I slid down to the ground, her body in my arms. I could still hear her shallow breathing, but she had lost consciousness.

"No. No, no, no, no, Ernie listen to me, okay? Listen to me, you can't go, you can't leave me, not now. No, no. Hey, who's gonna ride shotgun? Huh? Who?" I cried as everything in me broke down. I held on to her as tight as I could, and I kept rambling.

"Ernie I need you to listen. You're going to be fine, me and Sammy and Dad, and your mom, and my mom, we're all gonna be there and we're all going to be happy. We love you. You'll be okay Ernie, you'll be okay. Everything will be okay. Ernie? Ern? No. No, no. Ern. Ernie you with me?"

Silence. There was nothing. She was gone. I'd lost everything. Everything I had, I'd lost. I should've gone with her, I shouldn't have left her alone. She was supposed to grow up and go to school like Sam did, go have a life. She was supposed to live. Dammit, she was supposed to live! She didn't deserve to go like that! She didn't do anything, why wasn't I the one who was dead!

I started shouting, shouting to God. I never believed in God, Sam and Ernie were the ones who had faith, but that was the one and only time in my life that I actually prayed. I wanted to believe, everything counted on it. If there was a God, surely he'd heal her. She didn't deserve to die at all, let alone have her insides falling out of her, surely he'd bring her back. But no. Ernie was gone. I failed her, and because of that she was gone.

Some number of hours had passed before I had the strength to stand up, put her in shotgun, and then slide into the Impala myself. I drove away from the warehouse, away from the pile of blood. When we, sorry, I, had gotten to the motel, I got a sheet from our room to cover her with before I took her inside and laid her out on her bed.

That next sunrise to sunset was another mess. I couldn't call Dad. No way. I couldn't call Bobby, not yet. And I couldn't call Sam. Not now. I hadn't spoken to Sam ever since he called to tell us he'd gotten into the school. Then there was another issue I didn't want to think about.

What was I going to do with her?

Traditionally I'd give her a hunter's funeral, but if I did that then she wouldn't have a body to get into if she came back. I didn't want to bury her either, it seemed wrong. I spent the day drinking. Same case the next day. Eventually I found a graveyard on the more rural side of the city. I could bury her there, I thought. That's what I did.

That night I drove out to the church cemetery. There was a plot next to another grave, and that's where I started digging. I hadn't even realized how far I had dug until I had dug a big enough grave for two people. I climbed out of that hole and went to get her from the Impala, carrying her back to the place I had dug for her. I don't know what my face looked like then, but I know that inside, I felt dead.

I carried her down into the plot and laid her there. I unwrapped the end of the sheet around her head and looked at her. I had washed her up before I'd taken her here, but her wounds were still obvious. It didn't matter though. Ernestine was beautiful.

I kissed her forehead one last time.

"Goodnight, Ernie."

In the back of my head I heard her voice.

"Goodnight, Dean."

I climbed out, refilled the hole, and marked her makeshift grave with a small wooden cross. It had her name and her years, real basic. She always liked basic, wasn't one for extra this or that.

After that, I got in the Impala and drove away.

After fourteen years, I still haven't gone back there. The next year I had told Sam. He didn't pick up his phone, but I know he got the message I had left.

Back in '05 Sam and I started hunting together after the new life he had tried to build fell apart, and we've been hunting ever since.

I'm writing this from the Bunker, at the desk in my room. Not long ago me and Sammy got ourselves into a real mess and part of that involved him showing me some pictures. He gave me three pictures to remind me of who I was, because as usual, Sam wanted to make sure I'd be okay.

The first was of my mom, my dad, Sam, and me. It was before my mom died. We were a family.

The second was of Sam and I. We happened to drive by some museum while we were working a gig together, about a year after Sam started hunting again. Some couple asked if we wanted our picture taken. Naturally I started to say no, but Sam wanted them too, and they did. We were a family.

The third was another old picture, like the first. It was of my dad, Sam and me. Only it was just us, after I looked at it longer I recognized the little girl in the picture. Short, wavy brown hair and pale green eyes. Bobby took the picture of us after we'd taken Ernie in.

Ernie.

That was a name I hadn't thought about in a long time. She wasn't a regular conversation topic, as I said she's been dead now for fourteen years. In fact the last time Sam and I brought her up had been years ago, when the apocalypse was going on. But there she was in the picture and all the memories I had of her came flooding back.

Fireworks.

My birthday.

Sam's first hunt.

Her first hunt.

Sam going to Stanford.

Christmas.

Her dying in my arms.

We were family.

It was when I saw those three pictures I was reminded of my family and that's what brought me back.

Almost everyone in those pictures is dead now. It's just me and Sammy against the world.

Lately I've started to think of her more often, Ernestine. Me and Sam talked about her after the day he showed me the pictures, we were at a bar talking about a case when he brought her up for me. Talking about her made me think of her even more. So here I am, writing this. I don't know why, maybe for closure. I'll let Sam read it when I'm done.

I guess it's time for that ending now.

All I have to say is that people could learn from Ernie. She always did everything she could to make sure everyone was alright, and she kept fighting when times were tough. She would be proud of Sam and me, if she were alive. I'd like to think that she's in heaven.

Maybe she's met up with some of our lost ones. She and Charlie would have been immediate friends. She and Jo, they had so much in common, I think they'd probably fight a lot. Ellen would love her, she'd treat her like her own daughter. She was always good with computers, she and Ash would have a great time. Maybe she is up there with all of them. I know she's found Dad and Bobby. And her mom, maybe my mom too.

I'd like to think she's happy, wherever she is.

In every meaning of the word, Ernestine was beautiful.

-Fin-


End file.
